posted
Basically there's this Victoria Game on friday's I have just started up and I am getting really uncomfortable with the behavior of the Game Master and of the other experienced player.
Basically Gaius is the Game Master and I agreed to help him get a Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun game started, so I signed up as the United States. (so far I have made Mexico a sattalait)
And I brought in this player new to Victoria playing named BurningEgo, he has a history of not being particularly well behaved towards players that he perceives as insulting to him, but he has never once broken a rule.
We play our first session and he is Russia, we get to 1848 (from 1836) and he does a few exploits.
-Going to war with Georgia and ceding a province near St Petersburg to trigger an eevnt to move the capitol to Moskva.
-Consequently goes to war with Georgia several times to prestige farm.
Now the game has no rules against exploits and Gaius has even stated so while the prestige farming was happening and merely said that the only punishment was that most players will think lowly of him.
So after the session Gaius decides to reduce his prestige to zero as punishment for prestige farming. I protest this as him retroactively applying a nonexistent rule and that a minor slap on the wrist (-75-100 prestige) would be more approbiate, eventually Gaius says the discussion is closed and the next person to bring it up is booted from the campaign.
I inform Ego of the discussion but forget to inform of of Gaius's last post so Ego skips to the end without reading and posts his response (he was afk for about a week) and Gaius boots him from the game, and the forum admin and the player have troubles with Ego bans him from the forum.
I try to convince Gaius to undo that but to no avail he complains about how playing online isn't fun anymore, that he does all this work, he says he had to choose between 2 players and that he would pick the more experienced any day.
Here's the thing though, the player Dk, who was having difficulties getting along with Ego had also prior to this said "he was leaving the game" because he felt that it would become unfun and die because of Ego. So Gaius has to choose between Ego or Dk.
This is how it looks to me:
-Ego has been really quickly banned from a forum he had just recently registered to for posting an "Inflammatory post" which from what I could tell what not inflammatory at all except to a legitmate complaint that the GM and Dk were being rude to him, by of course Dk. And the Admin deleted the post and refused to discuss the issue.
-Gaius has booted Ego from the game at the first chance he could so as to not seem a "hypocrite", that he had to choose between Ego or DK and choose Dk, someone whose reliability to me is compromised over something he "predicts".
-Both people have absolutely refused to undo their decisions despite my best efforts at trying to petition their sense of fairness, sense of justice, and respect for legitimate legal precedents in regards to habeus corpus.
-Any further discussion on the forum has been barred in regards to the above issues.
To me this is exceedingly immoral, unethical and just plane wrong for a Game Master to make these heavy handed, arbitrary, rigid decisions in such a way as to only serve ones personal choices and interests and not what is good for the game, to the 3 years of Paradox Interactive Online gaming with various forums and GM's this has to be the most horrid handling of a simple dispute over a rule not never even existed and only retroactively applied.
I am not sure if I feel comfortable continuing to play a 6 month ORPRTSG (Online Role Playing Real Time Strategy Game) campaign with people who on one hand want a "casual game" but on the other hand so easily discriminate and oppress a new player just because one of the other player's doesnt seem to like him over issues that to me I agree are legitimate concerns Ego had.
Also there's a very conspiratorial nature to this from the private chat logs one can gleam from the save whereas Dk has asked Gaius when he would "Ban that ****" when Ego at the time was only asking for the game to be paused a little longer so everyone could finish doing a certain game mechanic that had to be done and could not be done during the game running.
I do not think I can be comfortable continuing this, what does Hatrack think, am I over reacting and being too sensitive or am I not reacting enough.
IP: Logged |
posted
If you don't enjoy the company of those you are playing with, its time to find a new set of people to play with.
Interestingly enough I just had a similar thing happen to me. (As in it happened just this evening)
Its a VERY long story but to make it short, my WOW guild cited the fact I was AFK 15 minutes during a raid as grounds to bar me from raiding with them 2 nights ago. I was extremely confused by the severity of their response as I had a very good reason for being afk. I suspected something else was at work and wrote an email to the guild officers voicing my complaints and concerns. Today they sat me down in a ventrillo channel and told me, "We are really sorry for being A**holes about this, the AFK thing was really just a scape goat, but the real fact of the matter is we just don't think you belong in this guild. Its nothing you've done, and you are not a bad person, or a bad player, we just want the guild to be a certain way and you just don't fit in.
I was completely stunned, I had no idea this was coming, I looked around at all the other people in the guild for some sort of defense or ANYTHING, and they all just looked away to be blunt. None of them wanted to take sides with me and jeopardize their future raid slots or popularity margins. I kept thinking, "Wow I went from possibly the most prestigious guild on my server to this guild because all my friends came here. My friends left one by one but I felt like I should be loyal to my guild and help build it up, I worked through the hard times where we could not get enough people for even a 10 man raid and now its getting ready to do 25 man content.
And now they kick me out of the house and not even pocket change for a taxi.
I won't lie, it hurt my feelings alittle that people I thought were my friends turned out to be so rotten, but I've dealt with it before and Ill deal with it this time.
Forget these guys, there are plenty other games and people who play those games in the world. Ill play SC2 with you until you go into a coma once it comes out Blayne.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'll also play StarCraft 2 with you guys once it comes out.
See that's another reason why I don't play those types of games. Too much emotional investment. I've seen people have to quit playing Counter-Strike due to being too angry and breaking keyboards/monitors/mice. Posts: 4229 | Registered: Dec 2002
| IP: Logged |
Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
the emotional attachment is hey, this is my country which I built up over X amount of time. And I like my little USA, no income tax for the rich, heavy taxes on the poor, industrializing at breakneck speed and I just crushed the Mexicans, none of this was directed at me which makes my situation not as hurt as BB's but I just don't know if my sense of ethics here can take what is obviously abuse, my biggest problem is hey my first victoria game in a couple of years since the game with KoM (which went well my China had to save his norway dozens of times), but I dont think a game is worth it if it so easily ostrachizes a player.
IP: Logged |
posted
I have never played a game online before (Dial-up internet is such a pain), but I sympethize with both of you. BB, and... er... BB.
I would find other people to play with. I'm sorry, but if people I know don't play nice, I don't play. In anything. Whether it be a video game, or trivial pursuit, or hide-and-seek. There needs to be good sportsmanship. I understand people lose it sometimes, and I get it. But still...
I hope it works out for both of you. :~)
Posts: 438 | Registered: May 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
So a player with an abrasive attitude that tends to make him come off as a jerk starts using questionable "powergaming" tactics in a casual game, and thus gets booted?
The GM is just that, Blayne: the game master. If he doesn't want to listen that is his prerogative(sp?). No lives are at stake here. If you don't like that style of game mastering, find someone else to start a game with, or start one yourself.
Your situation, Blayne, was maybe a .01 out of 10 on a logarithmic scale of moral outrage. BB's was closer to a 1, since it happened to him, and looks much more pre-meditated, and he had a lot more than a few hours invested in the organization that was supposed to be a cooperative thing (in your game, the players are in a competitive endeavor, so you'd expect less understanding/help).
I'd go looking for other players or games, sure. I hear there's a pretty good WoW player looking for a good group to play with
posted
I really was not trying to contest Blayne's situation with my own, just put up there as an example of the same sort of nonsense.
Multiplayer games, cease to be fun if the other players are not fun. Just like a race car would be pretty dull if somebody slapped a governor on it and it could not break 35mph.
Bokonon: Thanks for the close to 1 score! Incidentaly I'd be interested in hearing what you think warrants even an 8, a 10 would probably blow me away.
Who is this pretty good WOW player you speak of? Can I join his guild? Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Blayne, I'd agree with others that it might make the most sense to stop (if you're not comfortable playing with these people it's probably going to be more frustrating than enjoyable, but that's something you have to decide for yourself).
As for the moral outrage thing, let me give my 2 cents (keeping in mind that I'm not familiar with this game, so I may be misunderstanding things here).
1) It sounds like the GM is excessively autocratic on this issue, and potentially abrasive about it. I think it would be better to have had some kind of discussion at least explaining that X behavior is now going to be punished because it interferes with proper game play. Ideally these exploits would have been established as verboten at the beginning, but changing the rules (in order to preserve the game) mid-way through can be viable. So basically it sounds like he needs to be more communicative, and a little more lenient, but it's completely out of line here. 2) Exploiter: perhaps some leeway can be given if he's truly new to the game, and doesn't realize that his behavior is an exploit and potentially ruining the game for others (enter better communication from the GM and other players) but at the same time you pretty clearly establish that this is questionable gaming practice. When someone is using exploits to gain the upper hand over other players effectively it is cheating, which shouldn't be tolerated.
You seem very outraged solely at the GM when it seems that both parties are at least partly at fault here.
Posts: 1038 | Registered: Feb 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Personally, I'd be inclined to agree with the side that pisses off BurningEgo; anything that makes that guy annoyed is bound to be good. Remember what he did to the Great Game back in EUII? God what a jerk. Competent, I give him so much, but the attitude, sheesh. And the mouth on him!
But anyway, trying to look at it objectively, Gaius is the GM; if he had to choose between Ego and DarkKnight, he obviously made the right choice. One's an abrasive, exploiting player who can't play nice to save his life; the other is a nice guy who'll apologise even as he annexes you. If one of them was going to go, well, total no-brainer.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Well the thing is that Ego has actually very well behaved himself since then and also the last one to quit any subsequent EU games I've played.
IP: Logged |
posted
BB, single-handedly, knowingly, and with much vim and vigor starting the annihilation of all sentient beings both discovered and not yet known, would be a contender for a 10
quote:Originally posted by Bokonon: BB, single-handedly, knowingly, and with much vim and vigor starting the annihilation of all sentient beings both discovered and not yet known, would be a contender for a 10
-Bok
Well then I simply have to temporarily clip the nerves that deal with pleasure and pain, and reconnect them once destruction is complete.
Then the universe becomes my playground!
But that is a pretty good 10.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
Incidentaly I'd be interested in hearing what you think warrants even an 8, a 10 would probably blow me away.![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
